Personal Geographies

Okay, I remember why I hate google earth SO much.

It never seems to work the "right" way even when you follow tutorials.

I had originally planned to use my yoga mat as my personal geography but struggled with how I was going to execute the idea.

I happened to go to Mendocino over the weekend and did yoga outside on the deck, which left dirt impressions on the underside of the mat. They were very faint, so I nixed that idea.

I did leave the GPS running as much as possible over the weekend. (my car broke down and I left it in the car overnight when it was at the garage) We went through a lot of places where signals were weak and we went through a lot of batteries, but here is an image of "most" of our driving between Thursday night and Monday night.

It was a lot of driving. This didn't capture the drive too my mom's house in Pollock Pines or parts of the drive throughout. This is the satellite capture...

I was curious as to the actual mileage and routing and put it into google maps as a multi leg trip....

About 950 all told.... Including the back and forth when my car broke down and going back and forth for that.. In fact, there were so many stops on this tour, Google Maps wouldn't let me add any more destinations.

I ended up exporting the tracks as svg files using gpsvisualizer and decided to see where that trip would have taken me elsewhere in the world.....

I decided on Ireland since both my husband and I are of Irish descent.

I used the svg to create a transparent PNG to place into Google Earth and as I was looking at it, I decided to see what I would actually see if I were there. That is the only cool thing about Google Earth. I basically got to take a tour of Ireland through the eyes of others.

I started thinking about what I would like to see and found a map of the Celtic High Crosses so I decided to see if any of it matched up. A few way points did.

I added points at places where the crosses come close to the traveled path and had inserted images in to the points. I can NEVER get the tour to pause and show an image. It just stops at the spot and moves on.

In fact, I hated this so much last time I used GE for a project, that I ended up using google maps and screencast o matic to make my video (which was great because I could do the voice over work later).

COnsidering the amount of time the GE takes to get a handle on, I am not certain as to "what" I am going to make as an art piece.